


Water and Fire

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Bickering, Jedi Training, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Road Trips, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-26 17:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16685968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: An expedition to go looking for old Jedi outposts and ruins together had seemed like such a good idea at the time.





	Water and Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingargents](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Огонь и вода](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18315950) by [AOrvat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AOrvat/pseuds/AOrvat)



The shouting started even before Ahsoka exited her tent. One of them had tried making breakfast over the fire, and by the smell, that meant they were eating charcoal this morning. Ezra and Luke stood opposite the smouldering remains of the food dumped into the firepit. As she emerged, two heads turned to her and said almost in unison: "He started it!"

She took a breath. Someone had to be the adult, and once again, that was going to be her job, no matter how little sleep she'd gotten. She glanced at the food crate. "Good morning. I'll be making us breakfast." She crouched to open the crate, taking out three rations bars and tossing one to each of them. "Eat up, then put that out." She fought a yawn.

This had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Against the odds, Ahsoka and Sabine had tracked down their missing friend, not lost out in the unknowns of Wild Space but stranded with the rest of the Seventh Fleet on an uncharted world perched at the edge of where the Mid-Rim met the Outer Rim. Freeing Ezra had been another adventure, but the important thing was that they'd succeeded and brought him home. Sabine had believed everything would be all right if they could just return him to the people who loved him. Ahsoka hadn't been so sure. As the weeks had passed, she'd become more certain that rescue had been only the first step of getting him back. Ezra's eyes had kept a half-feral gleam. Surrounded by old friends, he'd become a new stranger, and no amount of love from his family changed the hunted look on his face.

Luke's eyes hadn't been quite right either, not since Endor. She'd last seen him on Hoth, the cheerful hope on his face reminding her too much of the good days with his father and even more of the bad ones. She'd had other duties and she'd left Hoth to keep those commitments, not because she knew the truth about his sainted dead father. Better to let Rex fill his ears with wonderful stories instead. Months later, Rebellion gossip made it to her ears, whispering that he'd faced down Vader, that Vader had bested him, taking his hand and nearly his life. Before she had a chance to seek Luke out to tell him the truths she'd kept to herself, the second Death Star had been rendered to dust. Luke had not been the same since, his face pale and pinched and full of sad secrets she knew only too well.

Darth Vader was dead. The stories built and tumbled around one another, but all of them agreed: Luke Skywalker had been the one to cast him down alongside his foul master. If Ahsoka had sobbed herself to sleep the night everyone else in the galaxy celebrated, no one else heard or cared.

They all carried scars. Healing would take time, best spent in the company of the few others who could understand that the price you paid for the power to protect the ones you loved was to surrender everything you'd ever wanted for yourself.

"An expedition," she'd said. "There are rumored to be lost Jedi outposts dotting this part of the galaxy. Who better to explore them than the three of us?"

The answer to her rhetorical question seemed to be, "Literally anyone else." The two young men argued constantly, or sat in sullen silences that Ahsoka had stopped trying to fill with pleasantries. Now they ate their rations bars without conversation, affecting to ignore each other. She sighed as she finished her own breakfast. Then she set her tracker inside her tent and checked the scan readout again, even though she already knew what it said.

"The scans say it's a kilometer that way. Given the terrain, we should be there within the hour."

They'd hiked to this campsite from where they'd landed the ship four kilometers away. The thick vegetation made any closer landing site impractical, and Ahsoka didn't like sleeping too close to a location that could be thronged with the ghosts of fallen Jedi. The three of them already fought nightmares each evening, another thing they all affected to ignore. It was no wonder they were on edge, she mused as she hoisted her own pack. She couldn't say when she last had a good night's rest even before she'd slept so near to the broadcasts of their bad dreams too.

The morning air hung sticky around them, promising a hot day. Their camp was near a peaceful-looking lake, where they'd drawn fresh water last night. It might be worth going for a swim if they weren't back late.

When neither of the others spoke, she said, "This way," and led them through an uneven path in the deep woods. Large animals had walked this way, timid forest-banthas perhaps, creating rough trails that crisscrossed and staggered back along the way to food and water. The same large feet had tromped down the space where they'd pitched their tents, long enough ago for the grasses to have grown back. The animals might be long dead, or migrated to another part of the planet. She had no way to know.

As they walked, today's quarrel subsided. Ezra asked, "How old do you think these trees are?" He craned his neck to stare above them.

Luke said, "I want to say a few hundred years." He went to say something else about trees, and the old look, the bad look, came back over his face.

Ahsoka said quickly, "I still remember the first tree I ever climbed. There weren't trees like this on Shili. There was a sacred tree in the courtyard of the Jedi Temple, and when I was about five, I thought it would be a great idea to climb it."

"How much trouble did you get in?" Ezra asked her.

"Enough. I wouldn't recommend it."

The trees broke apart in a sudden clearing, not unlike the one where they'd camped. Most of it was taken up by a decaying wooden building, squatted below the tops of the trees, the planks gone gray with age and neglect. A few high windows stared out, dark and empty. The eyes of the dead, and she hid her shudder at the unexpected thought.

"This doesn't look much like a Jedi outpost," Luke said. "It looks like an abandoned house."

Ezra closed his lips in a tight line rather than agree with Luke, but Ahsoka got the message loud and clear. He thought this was a dead end, too.

She held a scanner out. "I'm not getting any life signs other than the expected insects and rodents. I'm not sensing anything malevolent. Are you?" She let the question dangle, allowing them each to think she was addressing him. Both closed their eyes.

"Nothing," Ezra said, the word half out before Luke said, "Nothing bad. Something's in there."

"Watch your step. The floor may not be stable." Ahsoka went to the doorway, which stood partly open. The door was jammed in the way, keeping out most of the elements. She had to remove her pack to fit through the opening, which yawned into darkness. She lit one lightsaber to shine before her. The entrance room was small, unadorned, the floor piled with leaves that rustled with skittering feet. Tiny animals or large insects scattered from the intrusion, moving the mulched pile as they fled for the walls.

"It's safe," she called over her shoulder. She considered leaving one of them outside. It would spare a fight.

Ezra came inside first, squeezing in next to her. He carried his lightsaber, but as far as she knew, he hadn't used it once since their return. He did not light it now. Luke came in last, looking around the room in visible disgust. "That door held anyway." He gestured at the door in front of them, wooden and slowly rotting like the rest of the building. The handle was locked under her touch, but a shoulder shoved it open, the fragile wood ripping away around the latch. Behind her, she heard Luke's lightsaber come to life in case she found trouble on the other side.

It was someone's house. The first impression had been correct. A small stove, once sleek metal and now covered with a fine powdery oxidation, sat in one corner as both cookspace and heater. One chair sat by the lone table, spread with ancient flimsy that crumbled even as her hand brushed the tabletop. At the far end, a shelf filled with dusty trinkets sat beside a bed. From above them, the windows allowed in what light they could from the clearing, a few beams of sunshine lancing the disturbed dust at their arrival, glittering over the crumpled form that still lay under the covers.

Ahsoka made her way across the floor. The body had been dead a long, long time, protected from rain and the larger scavengers, but not immune to the long, humid days nor smaller insects that had crept in through cracks. She couldn't identify species from the skeleton. It might have been human once, or a near human.

"How long?" Luke asked, his voice a whisper.

"Decades. Could be centuries." Someone better versed in the study of death could tell them how long and how this person had died, but no one had come to check on them in long enough that she would guess there was no one still lived who had known or cared about them enough to ask.

Ezra inspected the shelf instead. He had seen an unknown number of corpses during his time with Thrawn. Another would be uninteresting at best, and perhaps the cause of more uneasy dreams if he went closer. "He was a Jedi," he said, carefully blowing away dust from a familiar cube shape without reaching for it. Another cylindrical object lay beside the holocron. The crystal inside the lightsaber hummed to itself, not calling out for a new owner. Luke had felt it outside. "The rumor was right."

Ahsoka stared down at the poor, forgotten body. Had he been sent to this distant world as punishment or on some forgotten assignment? Had he died long before the tragedy that befell the rest of the Jedi, or had he survived here unknowing, finally succumbing to a natural end? The holocron might have answers. She had none.

Luke went back to the table. The flimsies were well-decayed, suggesting he'd passed before the rest of his kind. She listened to Luke snap images of what was left.

"We should dispose of the body," she said.

"Should we?" Ezra countered. "This is a tomb."

Luke said, "Traditionally, Jedi were burned."

A moment passed, full of private thought and memory. "Yes," she said, and the moment passed. "But a tomb may be more fitting. If this was an outpost, this person may spend eternity keeping watch, and rest easier for keeping the duty."

She set the lightsaber on the bed beside the skull. They stowed the holocron into Ezra's pack, and the few books they found into Luke's. Knowledge was meant to be passed on, not hoarded. She hoped the old Jedi would understand.

They made their way out of the house, shutting the inner door and blocking it closed as they left. There was plenty of daylight left as they made their way back towards camp.

The argument restarted less than ten minutes after they started their hike. "I don't think we should have just left him there," said Luke. "The tradition was established for a reason."

"Ahsoka knows more than you do about Jedi tradition. If she says it's fine, it's fine."

"I didn't say it was fine, I said it was fitting." She knew instantly that she should have said nothing. Their two-way quarrel did not need a third spur.

"See?" Luke said.

"Why are you so burn-happy? Can't you leave the guy to rest in peace?"

"That's what I want to do, not leave him for the first tree falling in through the window to let in the rain or birds." He trudged along. "The stories said cremation kept people from taking parts of the bodies as relics."

"There's no one on this planet but us."

That was true. The culture that had once lived here migrated to another world, and those who had stayed behind died out, all thousands of years ago. The animals had retaken the world, and in another few centuries, the forest would eat up the little house and bury the single occupant under a tumult of trees, making him forever a part of the soil and the growth and the circle of seasons.

They bickered the rest of the way back, the topic jumping from place to place. Ahsoka ignored them as much as she could. When they reached the camp, she said, "I'm going for a swim. Alone."

She disrobed at the water's edge. The water hit her skin with a good crisp coolness, washing away the sweat from their journey and the lingering mustiness from the old house. From beyond the thin border of trees, she heard Ezra and Luke continue their argument, mercifully muffled at this distance. Their emotions pushed through instead. They weren't angry with each other, which was reassuring. She'd been taught that anger was a path to the Dark Side, but she suspected what her teachers had really meant was that anger was a terrible tool in the hands of anyone who could throw boulders with their mind. Ezra wasn't the same good-natured boy she'd met when he was fifteen. She worried his experiences at the hands of his enemies, held as a prisoner for years, left him susceptible to the call of the Dark. Luke had been just as sweet when she'd first met him, but his father had been one of the best men she'd ever known, and Anakin's anger had distorted him into a monster. Anger from either would be a cause for great concern.

Annoyance was less concerning, and even so, it was overshadowed in both by deep, painful grief.

Her friends were broken. She'd known that, had taken them on this mission because of it, but here, separated from them, Ahsoka felt the leaden weight on each one, pulling him under the water. People who were drowning often lashed out, and sometimes in their thrashing, pushed away the very float that might save their lives.

She called out through the trees, "The water's nice. You could both use a swim, too."

The noise stopped, and moments later, the two of them appeared through the trees, matching expressions of confusion and concern on their faces. Now that she saw them, really saw them, she wondered how she'd ever missed it, and could only blame the heavy blanket of her own sorrows clouding her vision.

"Are you okay?" Ezra said. "We heard you shout."

"I was saying, come swim. We're all hot and sweaty, and the water is cool."

Luke took half a step back. "I don't swim."

"You don't have to come into the deep part," she said. "You said you were from Tatooine?" She posed it as a question although she knew the answer.

He nodded. "Not a lot of swimming holes in the desert."

Ezra sat on the bank, taking off his boots. "I visited Tatooine once. Is the whole planet a desert?"

"Pretty much." Reluctantly, Luke removed his own boots. "Leia offered to teach me to swim, but we never found the time. Aren't there supposed to be suits?"

Ahsoka said, "If Leia's involved, they'll have four layers and a formal headpiece for evening swims." Ezra snorted. Luke managed to look offended on his sister's behalf, then grinned. She said, "Another Jedi tradition: the younglings and adolescents bathed together. We never bothered with swimsuits when we learned to swim."

Ezra had his shirt off before he paused. "All the Jedi younglings got naked together?"

"Not all of us at the same time, but whatever you're imagining right now, yes."

Ezra winced.

Luke said, "It's not that weird. Ahsoka's naked right now."

"I'm not the one Ezra just pictured naked."

"No, you are not, and that's a mental image that's going to stick, thanks," he grumbled, shucking off his trousers, and with a moment's hesitation, his shorts, too. He stepped into the water, chillpimples rising on his skin as he moved deeper and let the pool serve for modesty.

Luke took longer to disrobe, finally joining them in the water. "This feels better than a shower," he admitted. "Leia said there were mountain lakes on Alderaan where she learned to swim."

"There were," Ahsoka said. "Still and blue as the deepest part of the sky." The destruction was blamed on Tarkin, not on the Emperor's dark lapdog, and still she wondered how much of a hand Vader had in the loss of that world, those people, her friends. He'd spilled enough blood by then to fill an ocean. She looked at Ezra, and asked another question she already knew the answer to. "Why did you go to Tatooine?"

He splashed out a bit. "I was looking for Master Obi-Wan. Maul was hunting him because of me. I wanted to warn him."

So many old griefs. So many lost friends. Luke said, "You knew Obi-Wan Kenobi?" An old longing was in his voice, the same as when Ahsoka first told him carefully-edited tales of her upbringing.

"I met him. I wouldn't say I knew him. He found me in the desert, gave me some water, and sent me home. Maul was his problem to take care of."

"They were old enemies," Ahsoka said. "Maul murdered multiple people Obi-Wan cared about, and Obi-Wan sliced him in half."

Luke's face was open in surprise. No matter how many stories he heard, he was always astonished when he found out yet again that the kindly old man he'd known had lived a very different life once. He'd been the one to tell Ahsoka how Obi-Wan had died, his honest, trusting face unaware of what his own words had meant, or their heavy burden on her as he said them. Enough weights would drown the hardiest soul.

"Luke," she said. "Tell me what you did with Vader's body after he died."

The sorrow in his eyes grew, and they dropped for a fraction of a second to his right hand, the metal hand. "I kept the tradition."

Ezra said, "Sabine said he blew up with the Death Star. One of the Death Stars. How many were there?"

"There were two," said Luke. "Vader died on the second one. I brought his body back with me to Endor and saw to it myself." The words dragged out of him, drifting out into the water like dirt from a wound.

At Ezra's confused expression, Ahsoka said, "Darth Vader was a Jedi once. Luke made a pyre for him. I'd have done the same." She'd thought about it, in the dark nights after. Anakin's soul might be long gone, but she had assumed his body had been obliterated with the space station. This was better. Fitting.

"He was good at the end," Luke said, his face a mask. "He came back to the light." He looked at her. "You knew."

"I knew." 

"Knew what?" Ezra asked.

"Nothing now," she said. "Ezra, tell me about the fire."

He shook his head. "Nothing to tell."

"The Imperials didn't burn their dead. They spaced them or buried them. It wouldn't be something that happened while you were stranded."

He pulled away from them in the water, taking long strokes towards the middle of the small lake, ignoring her.

She waited until he swam back towards them, waited until his feet were under him. She said, "Kanan died in fire, and you're not over that. It's all right not to be over it. I miss him, too."

"You keep telling me what Jedi tradition is, what Jedi do and don't do. Kanan didn't teach me any of that. We were too busy trying to stay alive. I didn't even know there were rules, much less that he was breaking about half of them." He splashed once like a child, hand splayed wide. "Traditions didn't save the old Jedi. Ignoring them didn't save him."

Was their quarrel as simple as that? The two of them had met perhaps half a dozen Jedi or former Jedi between them in their whole lives. The human men they'd known had acted as fathers to them, and all had died. Every time the pair looked at one another, each resented the other for not being someone else. She'd brought Ezra and Luke on this mission with the hope that time around other people who understood them would help ease the burdens they all carried. That process must begin with understanding themselves.

"Some use traditions as a support and a beacon, a goal to embrace when everything else is chaos. You cannot control the spin of the galaxy, or save your friend from his own past mistakes, or prevent finding out your best friend is your sister," she said with a tolerant smile to Luke. "But the rituals and rules will always be there, a reminder of better days and a solid path to follow when all other paths are dark." She looked at Ezra again. "Others hate thinking about the past, and everything that is lost. Kanan left behind his name and the greater part of who he used to be when he went into hiding. Holding on to the old ways would have endangered his life and yours. He chose to accept and keep only the rules that fit, discarding what didn't. He taught you how to break ground on your own path instead of accepting the roads you're given. Anakin tried to teach me the same thing. It didn't work as well for him. He broke the rules, and the rules broke him." She met Luke's eyes. "That must be terrifying."

"Fear is the path to the Dark Side," he said by rote.

"Fear is normal," she said. "You can't let fear decide your actions, but you can listen to the counsel it offers. For example, it's natural to be afraid of walking into a volcano, but there may be times when you must go inside." Ahsoka stretched, her muscles relaxed by the water. "I'm going to go get lunch together because I'd like to eat something not charred." Before they could restart the mutual blame over breakfast, she said, "You two swim for a while. It'll do you good, and we can go over water meditation this evening. I think you might like it."

"I can't swim," Luke said.

"Ezra can teach you."

"I can?"

"You can. I'll call you when lunch is ready." She stepped out of the calm pool, using her robe to help dry herself before she dressed. She left them there, listening to Ezra put on his patient voice. He'd shown Sabine how to use a lightsaber once. She'd said he was a good teacher, which Ahsoka hoped meant he wouldn't drown Luke on purpose.

After lunch, they sat together at the camp, easing into meditation, and opened the holocron. There wasn't as much information as she'd hoped. There were histories of this planet and other planets in the sector, which cut off about a century ago. There were dry lists of equipment and supplies. Nothing about the holocron's owner, nothing about the reason for the mission, nor an explanation of why it had ended.

"I guess that's it," Ezra said as the holocron closed. "Just a bunch of lists."

"Lists are important. We used to have a holocron that contained a list of all the known Force-sensitive children the Jedi had found." She had no idea what had become of that list. Part of her wished to have access now. They could call on the now-adults with the Force, those who hadn't become Jedi for various reasons. Many had been found too late. Others had families that were loath to lose them, or were unwilling to let them learn to use their unnatural powers. Some might still have access to their powers even as adults, and some might have had children who carried the same gift. The Force was strong in offspring born to a Force-sensitive parent, at least among the handful Ahsoka had met. Other children would be out there. Not many. Never many. But a few.

Luke poked at the holocron. "This list was about how many crates of raddics to pack. Who eats a crate of raddics?"

"Someone who's hungry," Ezra said. He watched the campfire. A small portion of the wildness had passed out of his shoulders between the old house and the water. "I ate out of the garbage a lot when I was a kid. We ate some pretty horrible stuff towards the end on Tanalus, too. I could have gone for a crate of raddics."

He didn't talk about his time away, never volunteering more than simple answers to the basic questions he'd been asked after the three of them had made it home. Ahsoka had pieced together much from the things he hadn't said. "I can't digest them. You can have my share the next time we've got some."

"You can have mine, too," said Luke.

Ezra glanced at him. "You can't digest raddics either?"

"I can. They taste terrible." He made a face.

Unexpectedly, Ezra laughed. The sound surprised her, and seemed to surprise him as well. He hadn't laughed since they'd found him. 

"There were more than raddic lists," Ahsoka said. "The map of this sector included two more marked locations. They may be other outposts. It's worth checking out."

Luke asked, "What are we really looking for?"

"What do you mean?"

"This was someone's home. He was a Jedi, but he wasn't doing some great work we can rediscover. I looked through his books. Most of them are copies of other Jedi philosophy texts. At the last place we looked, there was an old monitoring station, but we didn't find any trace of Jedi there. Why are we visiting these worlds?"

"To see what's there. I don't expect to find much. Anything that was easy to find would already have been taken and destroyed by the Empire. We're looking for the crumbs they left behind, and seeing if that trail leads us somewhere they never discovered."

Ezra said, "There's somewhere specific you're thinking of."

"The stories we were told as younglings said ancient Jedi temples dotted the galaxy, their locations lost to history even before the Order fell. These were repositories of great wisdom. I don't think the Empire ever found them."

She took them both in with a look. The expedition had been a wild mynock chase, an excuse to take two incredibly powerful Force-users away from the people they might hurt by accident. But the little girl who'd sat with her friends listening to stories still believed there might be a mynock out there to catch, and she'd made half-hearted plans for her new pet.

"The Empire destroyed everything they could of the Jedi. If there's ever going to be a new Jedi Order, the two of you will be the ones to build it. Finding out where the Jedi began is a good place to start. It's not my task, because I'm...."

"Not a Jedi," they said in long-suffering unison.

"I was going to say, not interested in teaching."

"No you weren't," Ezra said, and his grin was his old grin. He wasn't better. He wasn't going to be better for a long time. But he'd get there.

They ought to head back to the ship and make for the next location. Afternoon was growing deeper, though, and the lake beckoned her for a second swim. It might be a very long time before she had another chance. Ancient Jedi secrets could stay secret another day.

"Who's up for another dip in the lake?" she asked, pointedly ignoring Luke's firm head shake.

Ezra took to the water meditation much faster than Luke did.

"Maybe I should sit this one out," he said, paddling close to the sandy shore.

"You're doing better than you think you are," said Ezra. "You almost had it that time. Remember when we practiced putting your head under? Same skill."

She thought about telling him that Anakin had not been a fan of swimming either. She thought better of it, keeping quiet as Ezra coaxed Luke deeper into the water. She was no teacher. Ezra was turning out to be a good one, though, and Luke a cautious but willing student. He'd picked up his own training from the books and scrolls he'd found after his too-brief times learning from other Jedi. He knew more of the lore than she would have expected, a perfect counterpoint to Ezra's practical skills. Luke asked questions like who had developed this meditative technique, and had it been attempted outside of the water? Ezra's approach was more hands-on, literally: he held his arms under Luke's chest, helping him learn to float. Between them, they could decide what it meant to be a Jedi now, after the war, after everything they'd been through. A mix of tradition and improvisation might be exactly what they needed when the next group of younglings were ready to learn.

It wasn't her place to decide. She wasn't a Jedi, no matter if they teased her for saying so. Ahsoka's other, private hope in searching for the ancient temples was to seek answers about her own path, and from the wisdom of the past, discover her own place in this strange new future.

By the time they dried themselves off and dressed, Luke could hold his breath under the water for two minutes. She wasn't sure either of them had picked up much from the meditation lesson, but both were looking at Luke's accomplishment as something to celebrate. They chatted lightly while they made dinner, avoiding burning what they had this time. Home wasn't an easy subject. The past had barbed hooks inside every memory. Instead, they talked about holos they'd seen, and datareels they'd read. Ezra was never going to be a fan of deep philosophical texts, but he'd read several entertainment novels.

"I swear we were the only crew in the whole Rebellion who had assigned reading. Hera always said she didn't care what we read, as long as we spent a little time reading it every day."

"I can picture that," Luke said. "The General always made new recruits read the manuals for their ships from start to finish before she'd let them into the cockpit."

That led to talk of their other mutual friends. Night dropped them into darkness, and the muggy air cooled to something far more pleasant as the stars peeped out in the space between the trees above their heads.

Ahsoka yawned. "I'm getting some shut-eye. We'll go back to the ship in the morning. We should reach the next planet on that map tomorrow without any trouble." She crawled into her low tent. Outside, she heard the two of them continue to talk about nothing much, finding new pieces of nothing to chat about together. The sound lulled her to sleep.

In the darkest hours of the night, she woke to an unfamiliar noise. On most nights, Ahsoka awakened to the sounds of her friends' nightmares, and once or twice, she'd awakened them with her own. She knew those sounds too well. She lay still now, trying to figure out what had startled her. She heard it again, followed by a whispered shushing. She sensed no one else nearby, only the three of them and the minds of the animals outside the clearing: the sparks of the single-thought insect minds buzzing in the thick leaves and the deep, slow thoughts of the forest-banthas far off in the woods. They weren't under attack. She closed her eyes.

Nothing more stirred for a while, then she heard a rhythmic sound that slowly sped up. A peaceful warmth settled over her. Ahsoka stifled an amused laugh as she recognized the feeling. This was not the first time she'd been in near company to a Jedi getting cozy with a friend, but it was the first time in decades that she'd been near two getting cozy with each other. She heard another noise like the first, placing it now as the pleased rumble in a throat. This time the sound wasn't quieted with a shush, but was instead stoppered by another mouth pressing hard against the first.

This was not going to settle all their arguments. It wouldn't erase the scars on their skins or cure the deeper wounds they'd collected on their souls. They'd find new arguments, and each would wind up leaving new cuts on the other's heart. Lovers always did. She was sure they both knew that, too.

No nightmares disturbed her rest, neither her own nor theirs, all the way to daybreak. In the golden light of the early morning, Luke dug sleepily through the crate for their instant caf and Ezra pretended he didn't crawl out of Luke's tent. Ahsoka watched them with silent amusement and she thought maybe, just maybe, this was the start of a good new day.


End file.
